77



CORRESPONDENCE.



OPERATIONS ON BIRDS.


Sir, —The account in the November Magazine of an operation per¬

formed on a Grey Parrot is very interesting. Only about a week before

the November number came into my hands, I performed a similar operation

on a Pekin Robin belonging to Lady Margaret Spicer, of Spye Park. Her

ladyship brought the bird to me and asked me to look at it. I told her

there was a large tumour under the eyelid, and that if she would wait about

five or ten minutes, I would take it out. But she said her doctor had looked

at and lanced it, and said nothing would come from it. I assured her, if

she would take the risk, I had confidence that I could successfully remove

it. Her ladyship left the bird with me to do with it as I liked, and called

about fifteen minutes afterwards, to see the bird in its cage with its face a

natural shape, only the eye (which before was completely closed) being a

little weak, and slightly damp from the bathing.


I think many species are very subjedt to these tumours: Virginian

Nightingales and Gre3 r Cardinals frequently get them just over the upper

eyelid, probably by dashing the head against the top of the cage when first

caught, as all these birds, at the slightest fright, make a dasli upwards; but

Pekin Robins alwaj-s throw themselves blindly against the wires of then-

cage, so the tumour in their case is either just over the bill or between the

bill and eye.


If not taking up too much space, I will relate how I first discovered

how simple a matter it was to remove one of the tumours. A farm labourer-

brought me a pure white Thrush (an Albino with pink eyes) which had

died, thinking I should like it to stuff. (It was a strange thing that he had

had this bird six months and I had never heard of it). He said he caught

it as a young nestling, but since he had had it a “ big lump ” had grown on

the top of its head and killed it. I accepted the bird, and, when skinning

over its head, I found the skin quite free from anj- connection with the

tumour, and the latter quite free from an}' adhesion to the skull-bone,

coming off the skull about the size of half a pea and of a hard cheesy sub¬

stance. When the bird was stuffed no one would have noticed that there

had been anything the matter with it : but before, its eyelid appeared to be

drawn up almost to the crown of its head. Now, it so happened that, at the

same time, I had a Grey Cardinal, a very fine bird, with exactly the same

complaint, and which I daily expected to die. So I determined, kill or

cure, to try the operation. After much persuasion, and a suggestion that

she was faint-hearted, I succeeded in getting my wife to securely hold it,

while, with the small blade of my penknife, very sharp, I carefully cut just

through the skin, right across the centre of the tumour, and, with the

point of the knife, parted the skin and uncovered the whole of the tumour,

which then easily came away. (But this one appeared as though in two

halves, like two chestnuts in a husk). After a minute’s bathing with a bit

of soft sponge and warm water, I replaced the skin as neatly as possible

omitting the sewing-up process, which I have never attempted, and then

turned the bird into a large outdoor aviary, where it was not likely to strike

its head ; two days later it was singing and appeared none the worse, wdiile

three weeks later it was V.H.C. at the Crystal Palace Show—so the



